Library Exhibit: Americans and the Holocaust

Films at City Tech Library

Below are a number of that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum have suggested to supplement the Americans and Holocaust exhibit. City Tech faculty and students may borrow these films from the Library's Multimedia Resource Center. Faculty may reserve the library's projection room to show during class. For more information, contact Prof. Junior Tidal - jtidal@citytech.cuny.edu.

• Hitler’s GI Death Camp
  Produced by Hoggard Films and the National Geographic Channel, 2011.
  When Americans think of GI's and the Holocaust, they typically envision young soldiers liberating deathcamps. However, in a place called Berga, American POWs worked and died as slave laborers in one ofHitler's most secretive concentration camps. This is their story.
   
• Casablanca
  Directed by Michael Curtiz. Warner Brothers, 1942.
  Call number: Video Cassette 506 - Available in the Multimedia Resource Center
  A cynical American expatriate struggles to decide whether or not he should help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape French Morocco during World War II.
   
• From Swaastika to Jim Crow
  Directed by Lori Cheatle, Steven Fischler, Joel Sucher, Martin Toub.
  Call number: Video Cassette 2004 - Available in the Multimedia Resource Center
  Before and during World War II Jewish scholars who escaped Nazi Germany and immigrated to the U.S. were confronted with anti-Semitism at major universities and a public distrust of foreigners. A surprising number secured teaching positions at historically African American colleges in the South. In many cases they formed lasting relationships with their students and had an important impact on the communities in which they lived. This is a story of two cultures, each sharing a burden of oppression, brought together by the tragic circumstances of war.
   
• I’m Still Here: Real Diaries of Young People Who Lived During the Holocaust.
  New York: MTV Networks, 2008.
  Brings to life the diaries of young people who witnessed first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust. Through an emotional montage of sound and image, the film salutes this group of brave, young writers who refused to quietly disappear. The stories of the young Holocaust victims come to life by weaving together personal photos, handwritten pages and drawings from the diaries, and archival films. Based on the book Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust by Alexandra Zapruder.
   
• The Great Dictator
  Directed by Charlie Chaplin.
  Charlie Chaplin Productions, 1940.
  Call Number: Video Cassette 1523 - Available in the Multimedia Resource Center
  Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
   
• The Path to Nazi Genocide.
  Washington, DC: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2013.
  This 38-minute film examines the Nazis’ rise and consolidation of power in Germany. Using rare footage, the film explores their ideology, propaganda, and persecution of Jews and other victims. It also outlines the path by which the Nazis and their collaborators led a state to war and to the murder of millions of people. By providing a concise overview of the Holocaust and those involved, this resource is intended to provoke reflection and discussion about the role of ordinary people, institutions, and nations between 1918 and 1945.
   
• The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
  Directed by Ken Burns.
  Produced by Florentine Films and WETA, 2014.
  Call Number DVD 2997 - Available in the Multimedia Resource Center
  Profiles Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Through their stories, PBS chronicles the history they helped to shape; from the Square Deal to the New Deal, San Juan Hill to the Western Front to the founding of the United Nations. Episodes 6 or 7.
   
• The War.
  Directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.
  Hollywood, CA: PBS Home Video, 2007.
  Call Number DVD 2670 - Available in the Multimedia Resource Center
  Tells the story of ordinary people in four quintessentially American towns - Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and Luverne, Minnesota - and examines the ways in which the Second World War touched the lives of every family on
  every street in every town in America.

Streaming Films

Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein's three-part, six-hour documentary series, The U.S. and the Holocaust, examines how the American people and our leaders responded to one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century, and how this catastrophe challenged our identity as a nation of immigrants and the very ideals of our democracy.

Dr. Caree A. Banton describes the intersection of the Holocaust with African American history in this video provided by Arkansas PBS